Important Information

Title: Last of the Amazons

Author: Steven Pressfield

Publisher: Bantam Books

Cover art: gorgeous: a very moving and reified portrait.

Length: 396 pages in trade paperback

Rating

5 nominated for 7 (magnificent scholarship that swells in the remembrance)

We just thought this was kind of funny. These are both quoted off of the book jacket. It’s funny for two reasons. The first is obvious: they totally ripped each other off… perhaps it was only one reviewer and he sold the same thing to both papers. But secondly, does anyone really believe this "best book of the summer" stuff? What can that even mean? Books published between the equinoxes get judged by the Detroit and Houston papers and they both awarded it this weird title? How is anyone supposed to take them seriously?

More good stuff from the PW. In a couple of sentences, they nicely summed up all of Pressfield’s cache and career: best seller, critically acclaimed, and ancient Greece.

Steven Pressfield is best known for historical fiction involving classical Greece. He has written a fascinating account of the Battle of Thermopylae in his book The Gates of Fire and responded with an equal achievement involving the Peloponnesian War with The Tides of War. They are both amazing examples of the best historical fiction has to offer. He is single-handedly dominating the entire genre of historical fiction involving classical history and perhaps (hopefully) igniting a new movement in popular literature that will rival vampires and protein diets.

It’s a bit dicey to include historical fiction under the umbrella of speculative fiction (we think it fits well, but we’re not yet ready to embrace the entire sub-genre) but in Last of the Amazons Pressfield has made a very daring leap. He is writing an historical fiction about a mythological event: namely, Theseus and his adventures with the Amazons. This is an exciting innovation—one we welcome from so sound a scholar as Pressfield—and clearly in the realm of speculative fiction.

Those elements that we enjoyed so much in The Gates of Fire and The Tides of War are present in Amazons as well. Pressfield’s scholarship is as outstanding as always. We’ve come to expect accuracy and learned philology every step of the way through these works and we are not at all disappointed here. His grasp of war, violence, and blood is amazing. Yet his attention to the classical mind—their attention to words, language, and philosophy—is breathtaking as well. It is a sheer joy to find the labors of Hercules and other mythological events related as factual events.

Pressfield is very fond of framed first-person narratives with slips in time between present battles and remembered events both told through the narrator. He continues this device in Amazons. Two parallel plots run simultaneously—the myth of Theseus and Antiope told in fragments with the return of these same Greeks many years later to the remnants of the Amazon kingdom—relayed to us framed first through the eyes of a very old woman (the last of the Amazons as it happens to be) and then framed again through the eyes of three other first-person narrators. Despite this rather convoluted framing, Amazons is a brisk read and well worth the effort. It has two things going for it, one good and one bad.

First, the bad. Pressfield is not very good at strongly differentiating his characters. One can recall to mind several authors in many genres (Gene Wolfe and Stephen R. Lawhead come to mind for speculative fiction) who are very good at first person narratives through different perspectives of similar or same events. Pressfield’s characters, unfortunately, use common perspectives, common speech patterns, and—most disturbingly—often seem to operate on a common set of principles. Here was a striking potential to show the classical mind at odds with the native, non-literate/oral tradition societies exhibited through direct narrative. But that ambition, while attempted, was never fully realized because of these commonalities in the voice. The Amazons and the Greek, the learned and the ignorant, the children and the elders, all these begin to sound too much the same.

But the good! The good is quite impressive. We’re well used to the fine, detailed, and learned description of Ancient Greece for which Pressfield is justly famous. There is something new with Amazons that is quite a delight and that is the exploration of the mind of the savage. We mean "savage" here in two ways: first, in the romantic sense of the "Noble Savage" and secondly in the sense of those steeped in oral tradition. There is a movement afoot, particularly in America, to romanticize the aboriginal peoples (the American Indian of pre-Columbian times or the aborigines of Australia, for example) as being spiritually tied to nature and the living world of Gaia before they were "corrupted" by European powers. Look no further than Disney’s Pocahontas for evidence of this phenomenon.

Even though the voice of the savage falters in the direct narrative, Pressfield’s insights into the savage are amazing where he both attacks and celebrates this romanticism. In scintillating moments of prose, he takes that particular idealism of savagery and accouters it with all the allure that it can possibly hold (especially for the idealistic young). Simultaneously, with his intimate grasp of war, he shows the horror, the cruelty, and the bloodshed that these cultures so often engendered. For all the well-deserved praise Pressfield receives for being a chronicler of war, it is the debate that occurs between these two societies, the classical and the savage, that will linger with the reader and it is to those passages that the reader will return.  

Pressfield does not appear on the shelves devoted for science fiction and fantasy. In very important ways, he is operating in a different arena. We believe this is due to the fact that Pressfield’s earlier books dealt specifically with historical events and only now is he moving to the more speculative realm of mythology. But Pressfield is not doing anything different than the many authors attempting to write about the mythology surrounding King Arthur (which are, of course, legion). What is refreshing is that Pressfield, who already is identified as a good scholar and authority on classical literature, has made an offering to the realm of speculative fiction and that elevates the entire genre. Its 5 is deserved (even if a touch disappointing) and it is a welcome breath of new possibilities to serve as examples for other authors not to mention a solace of respectability for the genre.

It’s hard for we men to decide what is good for women, but female readers, we believe—and most especially young women—will identify with Amazons and read it with great relish. Fans of Pressfield’s earlier books will also find the shift to mythology engaging and refreshing. High school and perhaps introductory college courses could do much worse than assigning Amazons as part of the regular course syllabus. We’re great believers in historical fiction in general and this is a splendid blend of mythology and history.

The language is extremely formal and nobody in the book laughs much nor is having a particularly good life. There is a great deal of bloodshed. Moreover, there is a pervasive pall of grief cast over the entire book. If you’re looking for something optimistic, fun, or something that will cause you to laugh, then go somewhere else. If your urge to read is centered around narrative perspective then you’ll also be rather disappointed with this book. This book is for classical scholars, historians, and lovers of mythology and/or Greek philosophy.